Ten Thousand Saints

by Eleanor Henderson (Ecco; $26.99)

This début novel begins in rural Vermont in 1987, at the apex of the hardcore-punk movement. Sixteen-year-old Jude has grown up in a hippie milieu: his absent father deals pot, and his mother crafts blown-glass bongs. After Jude’s best friend dies of an overdose, Jude makes a pilgrimage to New York, where both his father and his friend’s half brother Johnny now live. Through Johnny—the charismatic lead singer of a band—Jude goes on to find his salvation in hardcore music and the burgeoning straight-edge movement, whose members eschew drugs, alcohol, meat, and sex. Henderson wraps the plot up a bit too neatly, but she paints a compelling portrait of Generation Xers who fiercely reject their parents’ values of free love, and achieves the difficult task of making Jude’s ideological shift understandable to readers. ♦

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